Vietnamese users were disconnected from international Internet Tuesday when Asia-America Gateway, an international undersea cable system that links to the southern coastal Vung Tau province somehow was cut off.

FPT Telecom, Viettel Telecom and VDC, Vietnam’s service providers which rely on this cable system reported failure of international service, including e-mailing, website access, chatting and video calling.

However, domestic communication continued to run normally.

FPT Telecom said it had increased bandwidth capacity of other cable systems to cope with customers’ demands, but international connection was still unstable.

Users were advised to use domestic services and limit their international access, FPT said.

Le Huu Hien, vide director of Viettel Telecom said it had not operated to full capacity of communication bandwidth provided by the submarine cable system, therefore its connection to international services only slowed down a bit.

The Asia-America Gateway is a 20,000 kilometer submarine communications cable system, connecting South-East Asia with the USA mainland, across the Pacific Ocean via Guam and Hawaii.

It has landing points at the USA, Hawaii, Guam, Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei and Vietnam.

The cause of the cable severance has not been reported.

Source: VNE/Tuoi Tre